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[Portfolio, B.Arch] RIBA Part II / Year 4

[Portfolio, B.Arch] RIBA Part II

Future Sustainable Transportation System

West Cumbria

Research Composites

Portfolio

Design Thesis – ‘Future’ Sustainable Transportation System,

Eskdale Green Valley – West Cumbria

Unit 11 : Inner Worlds, Other Landscapes

SEMESTER 1

Inner Worlds, Other Landscapes

“[…] Architecture is born from the original discrepancy between two spaces, the horizontally orientated space of ourexperience and the vertically orientated space of nature.” Architectonic Space, Dom Hans Van der Laan (1904-1991)

Throughout history the discrepancy Van der Laan describes has gone through many permutations; from fearof the wilderness to ownership over it, from worship of natures divinities to rational observation of naturalforms. The unit’s ongoing theme is to explore these relationships, and how architecture continues to mediateand communicate between our inner worlds and the landscapes we occupy.

Our context for these investigations is Britain, which once again is reinventing itself, with the new coalitiongovernments emphasis on collaborative Localism we will explore how, in this contemporary context, thearchitect can facilitate imaginative and economically sustainable solutions.

The unit will be working in the geographically diverse peripheral territory of West Cumbria. Locked betweenthe Irish Sea and the Cumbrian mountains of the Lake District National Park, this region was recentlydesignated Britain’s Energy Coast and is earmarked for significant regeneration.

The unit celebrates a method of careful and precise research balanced with a personal, intuitive response toplace. Each member of the unit will develop their own programme through a ‘design thesis’ and have a choiceof non-metropolitan sites to create powerful, regionally specific and technically resolved architecturalpropositions.

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Study 1: Solid Base

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Study 2: Infrastructural Buildings

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Composite Drawing

Smithfield Market, London EC1

Case Studies

1. Smithfield Market

2. St Pancras Station and Hotel

3. St Mary / St Clement Danes RAF Church

4. The Temple

5. Hayward Gallery, Royal Festival Hall and South Bank

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Study 3: Composite Landscape

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From the Unit’s Brief

‘…it is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relationship between what we see and what we know is never settled… we never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself...’
John Berger, Ways of Seeing

Sketches

West Cumbria

Hardknott Roman Fort

Ravenglass

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Study 4: Composite Buildings

– Millom Castle, S.W. Cumbria

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Brief

The task was to conduct a measured survey of a group of existing buildings unique to the Cumbrian region in order to record their form, structure, material and how over time they have been added to. This is primarily an exercise in measuring, drawing and modeling a building and its rooms, although it is important to understand the context of the building both physically and culturally.In the previous building study there was a direct relationship between the infrastructural quality of the buildings looked at and their programme. This is an exercise in space and structure to learn lessons in proportion and composition, abstract from the programme of the building.Where the infrastructural buildings explored in London (Study 2) seem almost superimposed on the city structure determining what was around them, these buildings seem to have evolved with and even from the landscape. Arguably they can be described as vernacular in the sense that they have come to belong to and characterise this region. Also believed, there is a joy to be had in simply recording thesebuildings, some seem so fragile that if to fall into further ruin without being recorded, a small part of the history of this region and even the country would be lost.